


As These Days Watch Over Us

by M0use



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Image, Grief/Mourning, Holding Hands, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Late Night Conversations, Making Up, Mental Health Issues, Mikey Way: noted cat parent, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Overdosing, Recovery, Vampire Gerard Way, What Happens Next Will Warm Your Heart, pairings dependant on reading. touchy-feely waybros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-22 10:57:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6076737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M0use/pseuds/M0use
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2004: Gerard overdoses and dies in Japan.<br/>2014: Mikey runs into him in an alleyway in Brooklyn. Unsure what else to do, they sit down for coffee together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As These Days Watch Over Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [akamine_chan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/akamine_chan/gifts).



> additionally to the above tags: this fic contains frequent mentions of characters either feeling like they are going to vomit or actually vomiting (non-graphically). i tried to add it to the tags but it messed up the order. my apologies.  
> a prompt fill for akaminechan, who requested the following back in December: “ _Mikey / ?, Terror._ Mikey didn’t know how to be apart from Gerard, but he’s learning.”  
>  title from ‘Vampires Will Never Hurt You’, of course. epigraphs and general-feel inspiration from Jimmy Eat World’s “[Your House (2007)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmZs3cOfyzM)”. guest star lyric references from ‘Kill All Your Friends’. additional pre-meme inspiration from [this comic](http://madelinehmcgrane.tumblr.com/post/133117204772/a-comic-about-a-vampire-and-a-friend) by Madeline McGrane.  
> thank you, and happy February.

  
_*_

 _I feel the whole room  
can hear me clear my throat._  
_Ahh, ahh, out…_  
_You rip my heart right out._

  
*

  
  
The second week of August that year was re-teaching Mikey a valuable lesson: international tour was a fucking grind.

Their flight out to Japan had been actual, literal hell. No one in My Chem had really been talking much. Mikey had forked over a Xanax to his brother so they could both get on and disembark the plane without shaking to death. They were still a little stoned when they landed, but that was nothing. Everyone on the tour had a permanent headache most days.  
Mikey knew it was fucked up to think that, logically. Especially after what happened in Kansas. Gerard had told the whole band how sick he’d been, how depressed, and it wasn’t like Mikey was unacquainted with what that meant in their family. He shouldn’t’ve been giving his brother anything after a confession like that. But the thing was that G got really bad anxiety on airplanes. He’d been trembling. Mikey hated seeing him in pain, and he felt sick he’d let Gerard be in pain for so long and hadn’t even fucking _noticed._ (He needed to stop being so wrapped up in his own shit, Mikey decided. The other guys were more important.) So Mikey had given his brother a small share of sleepy-drug for the flight over the ocean. It was just a couple pills. It was nothing. They would get home in three days, and Gerard would detox, level out, and get the help he needed. He’d be okay. They just needed to get through the show.  
  
Once they landed there wasn't really a question of what they'd do.  
Gerard was smashed again by twenty minutes to stage time, puking sake and his guts up into a garbage can outside the venue. The guys stood around him, alternatingly furious and worried stiff. Gerard went on for so long Mikey was terrified he'd need to get Brian to cancel the concert, take Gee to a hospital, and then watch Ray and Frank follow Otter out of the band.   
Somehow, that didn't happen. They all rallied in time for the show. G stopped vomiting long enough to sing. Mikey, Ray, Frank and Otter played. All five of them survive until the evening.

  
It was an accomplishment Mikey celebrated the only way he knew how.

 

When he woke up next his head hurt, his mouth tasted of dried sock and he had no idea where he was. All occurrences were regular enough. Mikey sat up, grimacing when he rubbed at the carpet tread pressed deep in his face.  
He was inside, in—he squinted— it looked like a small hotel room. Not the one he’d dropped his stuff in the night before. He knew the people here though: half of the tech crew that’d been riding with them was sprawled out around him, and all of them seemed to have their clothes on in the right order.  At least there was that.  
Fumbling around on the floor beside him produced his glasses half-hidden under the hotel bed. He stood up and then made his way, zombie-like, to the tiny coffee maker that some thoughtful hotel custodian had made ready for whoever happened to land in the space. The sludge it produced definitely wasn’t the best he’d ever cooked up, but it served its purpose.  
He stole a water bottle from the loose pile on the floor, muttering a half-hearted promise to replace it at someone’s snoring form on the bed, and managed to get most of his hotel-brew coffee into it on the first try. Good enough.    
  
  
He was still a little bit drunk. He weaved his way down to the main floor and out to the lobby of the place, drinking from the coffee bottle every so often. It kept him vaguely upright. No matter how much he blinked, his vision wouldn’t clear completely. He nodded at the people he passed, hoping he wasn’t inadvertently being rude or wearing a “Westerners Are Drunken Assholes” shirt or whatever.  
He needed a game plan, Mikey thought. Okay. Step one: Find his band. Step two: sleep until showtime or cab call or whatever.  
Good plan. He fished his phone out of his pocket and, only slightly unsteadily, dialed Gerard’s number. The dialtone rang and rang, and then the phone company’s voicemail picked up.  
Mikey frowned at it. Instead of leaving a message he texted Gerard a rude phrase with a bunch of question marks, and decided to call Frank instead.  
Frank didn’t pick up either.  
“What the fuck,” Mikey muttered to himself, then quickly looked up in case anyone had heard that. He was out on the street now—thankfully the day was overcast, so he didn’t have an extra reason to want to murder his brain—and no one was looking at him. He looked back at his phone and tried Frank again.  
Nothing.  
Ray-- nothing. Worm— nothing. Brian-- busy signal. Otter’s cell had gotten trashed sometime in Massachusetts, so Mikey didn’t even bother with him.  
He stuck his phone in his pocket and put his arms around himself, clutching the coffee-bottle close to his side despite the mid-summer heat. His hands were shaking. His head swam and his breathing lurched, so he moved off to the side of the sidewalk and closed his eyes. _Fucking hangover._  
  
Nothing was wrong. They were all just having service issues or something. He needed to find his fucking band and get some sleep. This early morning shit was messing with his head.  
  
  
After about half an hour he managed to both remember and find the hotel that he had actually been checked into the night before. He nodded politely to the people in the lobby and winced his way up the stairwell, checking every floor, mentally cursing whichever scientist had come up with echoes.

  
His band was standing in a loose group in the hallway on the third floor. _Thank god.  
_  
They were part of a cluster that was taking up almost the whole hallway. Brian was pacing a tight circle while on his phone—explaining the busy signal—and holding his head with his opposite hand like it'd shake apart otherwise. Big Worm was a little farther away, talking to people Mikey didn’t recognize. Frank, Ray and Matt all stood in a mini-flock, close enough to be in Brian's orbit but outside his direct influence. Frank and Matt were smoking even though they were _inside a hotel,_ what was this, the seventies? Everyone seemed kind of on edge.  
Mikey didn't care. He sped up despite the hangover, relief starting to edge into his system. “Guys, hey,” he tried to call out, but it came up as a cough instead. Something surged up the back of his throat. He winced and tightened his hug around himself, not upchucking all over the carpet only through pure force of will.  
  
  
“Hey,” he managed when he was closer.  
The guys all jumped. They spun around to face him, and that was wrong: they should be as hungover as him, if not more. Maybe not more, Mikey had been the one to migrate farthest last night by the look of it, but still, jumpiness was for sober people.  
Mikey wavered. He'd been going to ask for a keycard, since he usually kept his in his wallet and he had no fucking idea where that had went, but. Something was off. “Guys?”  
“Oh, thank God,” Brian mumbled, staring at him.  In a millisecond his attention re-routed to his cell phone again. “No, no. My bassist just showed up, we hadn’t known whether—yeah.” He glanced at Mikey again, at the others, and then quickly walked a few yards away from the group while talking urgently in a hushed voice.  
Mikey didn’t have time to ask what that was about because he was suddenly surrounded by about six feet of Puerto Rican and being squeezed.    
“Dude,” he said tightly, “Hi, but, not feeling too good.”    
He wasn’t sure if Ray had heard him. He seemed to be purposefully carrying Mikey, like he did to Frank when the guitarist was trying to fight people for someone's honour at parties.  
When Mikey was let go he was in the middle of his band, and now additionally dizzy as well as hungover and under-medicated. He gulped in air and shut his eyes for a minute. “What the hell?”  
“Jesus fucking Christ Mikey Way,” Frank said all at once, not in response to anything. His eyes were red and the area around them was red, like he’d been wearing Gerard’s superhero-raccoon spraypaint and it’d rubbed off around his nose. He took Mikey’s confused pause as an invitation to throw his arms around Mikey, too. Otter hovered behind Frank, looking like— looking blank. He was still smoking.  
That was when Mikey realized the group was missing one. Mikey blinked and looked over Frank's shoulders, and behind them, but he couldn’t see his brother’s greasy head anywhere. “Where’s G?”  
Behind Frank, Otter’s face twisted and he turned away sharply. Mikey felt Ray and Frank’s backs both stiffen.  _Wrong._  
  
  
Mikey wasn’t drunk anymore. He leaned his back against the wall to get free of his friends’ grasping arms.  “Where is he? _Don’t,_ ” he side-stepped their second grabs for him. The movement made his eyes flare. “Just—jesus, I need to sleep. Can someone fucking tell me what--”  
He looked around for someone to answer him and noticed, with relief, that the door to their hotel room was open a crack. He was even within easy reach of it. He could deal with this after he'd had a couple hours rest.  
“Mikey, don’t--” Frank started.  
“No, look-- wake me up when he gets here, okay? If he's gone on a walkabout or whatever--" G couldn’t’ve gone far. They'd had actual security teams come with them to the hotel, they’d find him. They had to find him. Nothing was wrong.  
He turned and pulled the room's door open fully, tripping over the threshold with a swear. His glasses were smudged to shit. Damn it. He wanted nothing more than to fall facefirst onto a bed and knock out.  
“Mikey wait, don’t go in there!” Frank’s voice rose to a shout, others mingling with it in alarm, but then the heavy-ass door swung shut behind Mikey, cutting the noise off. People grabbed the handle, also shouting, but it’d locked automatically. It sounded like the rest of them had lost their keycards, too.

  
Mikey took a couple grateful steps into the darkness and then stopped, disoriented and creeped out. Abruptly alone, he felt something strange settling over him, like a fog. Mikey felt like he might've made a mistake.   
He should turn and open the door. It seemed like he was about to be the one to die in a horror movie; like the audience was holding its breath.  
  
Then the smell hit him. He startled backwards instinctively, covering his nose with his hand. “Gerard?!” He blurted without thinking, and then a spike of terror drove into his heart so deep he stopped breathing. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.  
  
The gloomy air of the hotel room stank like booze and sweat on unwashed adults, a usual tour-bus-smell already sinking into the room's every molecule from his band and all of their possessions; but also the ammonia stench of vomit, and blood, and underneath the heavy smell of _death.  
_ For all the violent bullshit Mikey had lived through, he’d never seen an actual body except at funerals. The smell tripped something in his brain anyway, the amigdala or whatever that housed all the scared-animal evolutionary feelings: it made him want to shy away.  
But Mikey couldn’t leave. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom a shape was emerging from it, close to the window behind the second bed. Something in a heap on the floor, and Mikey didn’t remember anything there when he’d left before the party last night. Something horrifyingly person-shaped.  
Every corner of Mikey’s head was screaming at him to leave, but he stumbled forward anyway. Fear numbed his limbs. “Gerard?”    
The shape was definitely a person. Straight hair fanned over the scrubby carpet, dark stains spread out underneath it. The booze and puke smell was worse up close.  
Mikey’s hands shook and the coffee-bottle _thunked_ heavily to the floor. He stopped right beside the second bed's far corner, most of the lump of the body on the ground still hidden from him, unable to go a step forwards. He was breathing in uneven gasps.

  
The door rattled and slammed open behind him, bringing with it a swell of voices. Heavy steps were followed by a familiar pair of arms that wrapped around Mikey’s stunned shoulders. “Come on,” Worm’s don’t-talk-to-me-about-this voice said. “Let’s get you out of here.”  
There was someone else behind Worm: Frank’s unsteady crying-breaths. His hand on Mikey's arm.  
Mikey was being pulled backwards, and he went with the pressure without thinking. He couldn’t feel his legs. His whole brain was static noise. “Gee?”  
Worm kept talking over him: “We’re gonna get you somewhere safe."  
“But--”  
“He’s gone, man,” Frank said hoarsely, like he was angry about it. Then he paused, his throat clicking as he swallowed, “I’m—I’m so sorry.”  
“No,” Mikey said, “No, he can’t--” He hated the pleading sound in his voice, hated how much it shook, but he couldn’t stop it.  
  
Worm pulled Mikey into the hallway and the door shut behind them. By the time Ray's hand joined Frank's in a vice-grip on his shoulders, Mikey's pleas had morphed into dying animal-like sobs, which he couldn’t stop either.

 

 

 

*

_  
Then out of nowhere, put me right back there.  
Ahh, ahh, out...  
You rip my heart right out.  
  
_

_*_

 

 

  
A week after his thirty-fourth birthday Mikey got mugged during a late-night pizza run. Thankfully he’d only had his twenty dollars on him, plus the pizza. He hadn’t even brought his phone. The whole thing was over pretty fast. The motherfucker who’d mugged him had been young, maybe mid-twenties, and had held a knife like he had no idea what to do with it. He seemed to be desperate but not actively homicidal. Mikey gave him the cash and he’d bolted.  
Overall it’d had the opportunity to have gone a lot worse. Mikey walked the rest of the way home, handed off the pizza to his neighbour, filed a police report and stayed the fuck inside for a while.  
He maybe should’ve known better than to be out at night in the first place. There’d been a bunch of weird attacks in Brooklyn lately, bloody ones that made even a honest horror nerd like himself wary and horrified. It didn’t help that he knew offhand the statistical amount of serial killers active at any given day.  
  
  
All of which meant that the _next_ time he got jumped when out past nine PM, he wasn’t surprised exactly _,_ but still couldn’t believe himself.  
It was during yet another “emergency” midnight grocery run. His cupboard had been empty of the weird fibre-dense galaxy brownies he preferred. He needed to learn to let this shit wait for morning. He needed to get back on a regular sleeping and eating schedule, period; he'd been letting it slip again.   
In the split-second after he'd heard the shuffling, then sharp, footsteps behind him but before the person grabbed him, Mikey decided not to run. If they had a bat or something they’d probably just chase him, and it’d rained the night before so he’d trip before he got anywhere. Dani would be really upset if she had to pick him up from the hospital.  
Swallowing his fear, he raised both his hands, then tensed up as someone grabbed his shoulder. “I don’t have anything--” he started.

 

“Holy shit, Mikey?” The pressure on his shoulder immediately vanished.

 

Mikey’s brain blanked.

 

  
“Mikey!” His would-be attacker laughed, and suddenly Mikey was being spun around and pulled into a close hug. Then the other person stepped back, and Mikey’s brother was beaming in front of him.  
Mikey couldn’t see him very well in the shadowy alley, but it was definitely him. His voice. His smile. His tiny teeth, gleaming in the orange light from the streetlamp half a block over. Two of the teeth set at each corner were sharper than Mikey remembered.  
In Mikey’s head, _mysterious bloody attacks_ and _sharp teeth_ and _dead sibling_ melded together and produced the only possible answer. Without moving, he reeled.

  
Gerard had been talking while Mikey had been standing in shock, on and on, but finally he paused. “'I'm—sorry, this is a lot, huh?” He reached out a hand to wipe something off of Mikey’s forehead in an old, familial gesture. His fingertips were cold. “It's so good to see you.”

  
“You— I’m hallucinating,” Mikey mumbled. He looked up at the dark sky, at the power lines past the corner store on his left, anywhere that wasn’t right in front of him. He’d double-dosed or something. Nervous breakdown. An acid feeling filled up most of his chest.  
“No you’re not, Mikey.” Gerard shifted on his feet, like he wanted to step forwards but changed his mind.  
“You’re a vampire,” Mikey said. He didn’t move otherwise. “You—what the hell happened to you?”  
Gerard smiled apologetically. He didn't deny it. “It’s a long story,” he said vaguely instead.  
He paused, then perked up. “Do you want to get some coffee? We could talk about it.”  
“Coffee?”

“Yeah.” Gerard looked hopeful. He carded his hand through his chin-length hair.

 

It was such a familiar gesture it made Mikey want to throw up. He should go home.   
Whatever he’d taken, he couldn’t even remember it—but it must be substances, his manic episodes didn’t usually come with actual hallucinations. Either that or he'd have another interesting development to go over with Dr. Scott on the tenth. Regardless, he probably wouldn’t remember any of this come morning. Elephant would need him to refill her food bowl when she woke up (near sunrise), and there was a meeting at noon the next day he had to be at. He needed to go home.  
  
Gerard was standing in front of him. _Gerard._  
  
Belatedly, he put his hands down. “… there aren’t any good coffee places open right now,” he said, trying to talk through a dry throat. He mostly succeeded. “We’ll need to, to go to Starbuck’s or something. Before we get mugged.”

Gerard didn’t move for a moment, processing the question, and then he laughed again. Mikey nearly flinched at the sound.

 

*

 

They ended up in a 24-hour McDonald’s. Thanks to it being one a.m. the place was pretty empty, and even clean. McDonald’s-clean, anyway, Mikey thought. The soft, occasionally ripped turquoise seats of the booths shined, and the floor had a freshly-washed squeak under his shoes. The smell of grease in the air settled his chest a little. As long as he didn’t look at who was walking in beside him he wasn’t going to freak out.  
“The grease always kinda reminds me of home,” Gerard said casually under his breath, totally defeating the purpose of Mikey not freaking out. He nudged Mikey’s elbow with his as he brought his hands up to his pockets.  
Mikey nodded, pretending to read the menu.  
“The diners were better than this,” Gerard added, still quietly. “Remember going to Tik Tok?”  
“They closed that one down,” Mikey replied. He looked over despite himself.  
G was smiling again, just a shy tiny smile that he had reserved for inside jokes, before. Mikey looked away. His heart hurt.  
  
Gerard had a fucking repertoire of smiles and Mikey knew every one of them. Case and point: when they finally both walked up to the counter and the young east Asian man working the cashier asked tiredly, “How can I help you?”, the expression that unfolded across Gerard’s face was _inviting_.  
“Just a mocha. Uh, large,” Mikey supplied, trying to quash the alarm suddenly blaring in the back of his brain. “And a double cheeseburger, please.” He paused, waiting for G, but his brother just shook his head. “That’s all.”  
Despite not ordering anything Gerard waved his hand when Mikey started to search his pockets for a bill. Gerard reached into the inside of his coat and took out a wallet; brown leather, all sharp corners and a professional-looking buckle. It didn’t seem like Gerard’s type at all. He pulled a twenty out and handed it to the cashier, still with the same smile.  
The kid blushed a little as he handed back their change. He seemed significantly more awake than he had two minutes ago. “It’ll be right out, I just have to boil some more coffee,” he said.  
“Thank you,” Gerard replied feelingly as the kid turned away.

  
Mikey dragged him away to the farthest corner booth from the counter before he could do any more damage. “Dude, he’s like twenty-two,” he said lowly as they sat down across from each other.  
“I wasn’t asking him on a date,” Gerard said, raising his eyebrows— and then narrowing them once he caught on to what Mikey was actually saying. “You think I eat everyone I smile at?” _  
_ “I dunno, you might,” Mikey said. He wasn’t really thinking about the words. They just sat on top of his brain, part of a legion of outgoing signals while he was concentrating on not hyperventilating. _  
_ “Well, I don’t,” Gerard replied. His voice had gone affectionate again. “For your records."   
Mikey didn't have anything to say to that. He busied himself re-arranging his coat and taking his mitts off.  
  
"How've you been?" Gerard asked once they'd both settled as comfortably as they could into the booth. "You look really different."  
"That's an opener," Mikey muttered, shoulders hunching reflexively. He rubbed his jaw, hiding a little and wishing he’d thought to shave before he’d… went out for emergency snacks on a Thursday night. Right.  
"I didn't mean it badly, Mikey," G said reproachfully.  
Of course he hadn't. Mikey wanted to shoot something back, but for that he'd have to do something terrifying: look at his dead brother in full light. For a minute Mikey studied his fingers, and then summoned up the reserves of courage he’d built over years of NA meetings. He looked up.  
Gerard was picking at his own nails and tossing little bits on the table in front of him, but he matched Mikey's gaze warmly. He seemed to be drinking the sight of Mikey in. One of his corner-teeth poked over the side of his lip. His eyes were—there was something a little off, there, something you’d have to look for a while to see.  
It was like looking into a spotlight. Mikey had  _forgot_ how entrancing Gerard could be.  
He wondered if some of the Twilight shit was real, if he’d been dazzled or whatever, but at the same time he knew his brother had always been like this. Mikey remembered when they were both children, lifetimes ago: G had had some pull even then. And with the band, their kids had liked them because the music spoke on its own, of course, but they followed them because of Gerard. Mikey hadn’t ever wanted that kind of attention focused on himself, but Gerard had shone with it.  
Apparently ten years dead didn’t make a dent in that kind of effect.  
If anything, it seemed to have made a positive difference. His brother looked... clean _._ He looked healthier than he’d been in his coffin, healthier than Mikey had seen him in years before then. If he had a one-sentence introduction in a script it would be “fresh out of art school”. His hair looked greasy but soft, sitting just above his shoulders, dyed dark; his black pea coat and striped grey scarf matched in traditional goth style. The only spot of brightness in his clothes was a unicorn-silhouette broach pinned to the coat's lapel. (Mikey realized with an unpleasant jolt that the little pin used to be his _._ )  As a counterpoint, Gerard’s skin was smooth and pale like he’d been washed in milk. The buzzing fluorescent McLight's, which would wash out anyone human, only made him seem to glow. G looked _young._  
He was young, really; compared to Mikey. He was almost closer to being in high school than being Mikey's age. Jesus.  
Okay, so none of that had helped. Mikey glanced back down at the plastic table for a second and pulled at his holey winter hat self-consciously.  He knew he was being ridiculous. He felt it, though: the scrawniness and wrinkles and eyebags and scars on himself, in all the ways that he didn't usually and hadn’t before. He was simultaneously thankful for his long fall coat covering his arms and wishing he’d brought his own scarf to hide in.  
Had he been this self-conscious around his brother before? Mikey couldn’t remember. He didn’t think so. But they’d been closer together then.  
  
"What is it?" Gerard asked, quietly, like being loud would break some kind of spell. He hadn't blinked the whole time Mikey was studying him.  
Mikey shook his head and shrugged at the same time. “Do you remember when we were kids, and you were in that Peter Pan--”  
Gerard groaned out loud and covered his face dramatically, all at once seeming like nothing except for a young guy who was awake too early. “Don’t remind me, holy shit.”  
“Hey, it wasn’t that bad."  
“Green tights,” Gerard mumbled, then shook his head. “But why were you thinking about that?”  
“Just the. You’re all, y’know.” Mikey waved his fingers in a sad imitation of a jazzhand, and then gestured vaguely behind them, toward the take-out counter. “You could always be pretty good at turning the charm on when you wanted,” he said finally.

Gerard didn’t reply, just tilted his head in recognition. He propped up his elbow on the table and carded his fingers through his hair, tapping out something with his other hand. He looked up through his eyelashes to see if Mikey got the joke.  
Mikey squinted for a second, eventually recognizing a bass line of The Smiths. “... I’m not going to dignify that with a response."  
Gerard smirked, victoriously.

  
"Your order's done, sir," the cashier called out from the counter.   
Mikey got up to retrieve it, thanking the kid again as he took the tray with his burger and coffee. The cashier smiled politely in response. He felt the kid’s eyes on him—and, he assumed, on Gerard—as he walked back to the table.

  
Mikey made a split-second decision when he actually reached the table and sat down next to Gerard, instead of across from him. He focused on shelling his cheeseburger while he felt Gerard move over a little in surprise.  
A moment later Gerard moved back, and they were sharing a metaphorical bubble. It felt familiar. Personal space more or less didn’t exist between them; or any of the other guys in the band, for that matter. It almost never had.  
Thinking of the band brought a sharp pain. Mikey took a bite of his food and breathed through his nose, counting up to ten and then back down. It was a little easier to focus on not freaking out now that he wasn’t under the spotlight anymore. Partly he’d sat here to block the cashier kid from Gerard’s view; partly because Gerard’s stare had been unnerving him.  
  
“God, that smells good,” Gerard said suddenly.  
Mikey froze, unsure what to make of that. “I--?”  
Gerard’s hands appeared around the cardboard coffee cup on Mikey's tray. “Do you mind?” He asked, “It’s-- I can’t drink it, I mean, anymore. It doesn’t really work. My body can’t process it.”  
“Huh,” Mikey said, but he didn’t mean it as a question. Something clicked: “That’s why you didn’t order anything?” He glanced up at Gerard again.  
Gerard nodded, still warming ( _?_ ) his hands on the cup. “It smells amazing, though,” he said. "Can I see?"  
"Sure?"  
The cup disappeared from in front of Mikey and there was the telltale sound of a plastic lid popping off. Mikey turned his head to watch Gerard leaning over the rising mocha-steam like he was a seer looking into a heat vent. He closed his eyes, his expression sliding into an exaggerated O-face.  
“Show the counter kid that and he won’t want to talk to you anymore,” Mikey said without meaning too.  
Gerard legitimately giggled, like he did when he found something really funny.  
He sounded like he always had and it scattered little drops of sunlight in Mikey’s heart. Despite himself, for the first time since he’d heard footsteps behind him in the alley, Mikey relaxed. 

  
When Gerard passed him his coffee back he took a deep sniff of his own before actually drinking some and then putting the cup down, carefully, at an equal distance between them. "I prefer darker roasts, but not here," Mikey offered.  
They went on for a while about coffee: all the kinds that Gerard missed the most; the weird Frankenstein drinks that Mikey had built in his apartment once he’d gotten a hang of the one-cup espresso machine Danielle had co-bought with him as a "hell yes first non-survival paycheck in Brooklyn" present. He'd gotten it before he'd even found his laptop. He still didn’t have a TV, but he downloaded his favourite TLC house renovation shows off BitTorrent, anyway, so fuck it. Priorities.  
Gerard mocked him for that. “Old habits, huh? Had a PI stop by yet?”  
“Fuck you,” Mikey said through his cheeseburger, then flipped G off with his left hand just in case he wasn’t understood.  
He’d looked over, startled, when he felt his brother’s cool hand close around his.  
Mikey thought for a second that he was trying to start an arm wrestle or something, but instead Gerard folded their fingers together like their life force would meld. He was smiling a little again, adoringly, having turned so he was watching Mikey like Mikey the most interesting thing in the world. He looked like a relaxed cat.  
Mikey took a sip of his coffee, carefully not overreacting. Yeah, his dead brother was exactly like a cat. Murderous predator with an unassuming form who, for some reason, Mikey was allowing him close to him. Also, just being around him was enormously comforting.  
“Don’t be jealous I have better taste in movies than you,” Mikey said after a pause.  
“Motherfucker,” Gerard laughed, “I showed you most of the good ones!”  
  
  
They talk for hours.  
  
  
Gerard kept glowing, for lack of a better term, throughout the conversation. He got really animated when discussing how shitty the recent Wolverine movie had been to the material; gesturing one-handed, while keeping his right hand on Mikey’s left. His skin never warmed.   
It got uncomfortable after a while, but Mikey didn’t pull away. He finished eating his cheeseburger one-handed, pausing every so often to make an indignant noise. Between his bites they batted ideas and memories back and forth, sharing opinions on movies, new songs, older songs, how weird it was that it was so comparatively warm in November.  
Sometimes they literally finished each other’s sentences, because apparently the psychic abilities everyone had used to mock them for still worked. That stabbed a little at Mikey’s heart. Even so, he was glad for it. He hadn’t been able to talk to someone this easily in a long-ass time.  
  
  
But conversation looped back around to themselves again, eventually. They had exhausted some topic—later Mikey couldn’t remember it—and both of them fell quiet at the same time. The fluorescent hum of the overhead lights re-asserted itself, gently, like the lights coming up after a show. Mikey looked into his coffee and realized he’d finished it. He didn’t want to get up, though. They were still holding hands.  
“So you left Jersey,” Gerard said finally, picking at an invisible spot on his coat with his other hand.  
“… yeah,” Mikey replied. “It took a while.” He didn’t want to talk about this. The easy feeling of connection started to drain away, leaving his arms feeling heavy. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes with his right palm. He pulled his phone out of his pocket to check the time: _4:12a.m._ Jesus. It’d be actual morning soon.  
“Why’d you go?”  
“Why does anybody?” He said, replacing his phone. Too many memories and too little prospects. He loved the place, but— “It felt like I had to. Or the tentacles would get me. You know?”  
Gerard nodded seriously, his mouth bent into a kind of grimace. “So… um. Was it right after…”  
Oh. “No, not that soon. Mom—I stayed with them for a while,” Mikey said awkwardly. He didn’t add, _I got home with paperwork from a Japanese funeral parlor about the cost of flying your corpse back to the US,_ or, _Mom made me sleep upstairs in the front room until she felt sure I wouldn’t kill myself in the house,_ or, _Dad came over and it was the first time I’d seen them together since they divorced. They were both crying. It was awful._ Or even, _I cleaned out your room myself because I knew there’d be shit in it that you didn’t want them to see, I didn’t even recognize what some of the pills in your nightstand were.  
_ “What else?” Gerard prompted. “I mean, you’re not living with them anymore.”  
“No. Eventually I went, went back to university. Part-time. Filled out some applications for bookstores.” It’d been like walking backwards three years. He’d woken up some mornings in his childhood bed, thinking he was still in high school.  
Gerard frowned. “Not bands? Music places?”  
Mikey shrugged. "I play on weekends still sometimes."   
Gerard leaned forward, touching Mikey’s forearm with the hand that wasn’t currently entwined. “Dude, you’re a musician.”  
The words soured Mikey's head. “Whatever, I was never going to be in a band without you.”  
His brother's ghost had been in everything remotely related to songs. Mikey hadn't touched his (much beloved) bass for a year, at all, after he'd came home. Fuck music; he hadn’t fucking known how to be apart from Gerard for long, let alone  _live_ without Gerard. But he’d learned.   
Gerard asked, still frowning, “You mean because of the label?”   
Not in the least.  “Yeah.” Mikey rubbed his eyes, trying to persuade the tired-ache to stop. “It was-- management at Reprise gave us all severance pay, basically, but the record kept selling so they didn’t drop us entirely. Not until we’d officially dissolved the band.” This was the same backstory he’d shared with four different therapists over the years. It felt almost routine, except for the next part, which always stung. “Brian talked to the heads, me and the guys all agreed. It, uh. We weren’t going to just keep going.”  
“Mikey,” Gerard said, sounding wounded.  
  
_Too much._ Mikey shook his head, banishing all of it to the back of his mind again. “So I was lucky. I got accepted into CNJ, and even got a job,” he jumped ahead. “Eventually. I worked in a, fucking, a Hot Topic. Sales rep, just sorting, folding, whatever. Spent all day Mallratting basically.”  
“Oh. That’s not bad,” Gerard said. “I worked--”  
“I know,” Mikey cut him off. “I was at your old store.” His brother had worked in a Hot Topic right after he’d gotten out of university in 1999, before he’d gotten the paper-boy internship with DC. The manager at the branch Mikey applied to recognized his last name on the application. They probably wouldn’t’ve for any other employee, but Jersey was a claustrophobic place people-wise, and Gerard _had_ been a rock star. It was a hell of a thing to be hired because of pity over your publically-dead sibling. Mikey hadn’t been in a place to reject any offers, though.  
Gerard fell silent.  
Mikey felt like shit. He picked at a stray piece of sad lettuce on his tray. “I kept taking classes in the evenings,” he continued, quieter. “The film stuff, you know? I only needed a few more credits, so. I have a B.A. now.”  
Gerard cracked a smile. “Congratulations,” he said, like he meant it.  
“Thanks,” Mikey said. “And, you know. Got a temp job in the city, just retyping shit from hardcopies into computers basically. Saved up. Mom helped. Eventually got my own place out here. I mean, I have roommates, but none I’m related too.”  
Gerard nodded, rubbing his thumb over Mikey’s thumb.  
Mikey stared into the congealing dregs of his coffee cup. There was a lot he was skipping over in the story: him graduating, the purgatory between studies and work, getting into the club scene in Jersey again, his pill problem (born when he was six-fucking-teen and never really died) steadily worsening. Moving jobs and homes into the city, meeting Jessa, adopting Elephant with her, getting arrested, breaking up with Jessa. Falling into binge-drinking again. Months of darkness. Frank running into him at a party in Hoboken one night out of sheer fucking luck and, because Frank was a better friend than Mikey had any right to have, basically dragging Mikey’s wasted, manic ass back home. Frank and Toro and his Mom begging him to see a doctor, standing by him despite how horrible he was until he’d finally broken through the last of the denial and admitted he needed help, then looking and looking, finally finding one who worked for him and took insurance. Starting therapy, his diagnosis, cold turkey detoxing, then prescription meds, AA meetings, managing side-effects, keeping up his appointments, backsliding, adjusting, finding a balance. Finding more work. Getting Elephant back from his friend Cate, who’d been taking care of her since he and Jessa split up. Moving out for the third time. Meeting Danielle... A lot of things.  
He didn’t want to get into any of it. Not because he was ashamed anymore—he couldn’t change the past, just his own behaviour now—but having to relate everything to Gerard like this felt _wrong_. G had been one of the closest people in Mikey’s goddamn life. He should know everything about Mikey already. It hurt that he didn’t.

  
“What about you?” Mikey changed the topic, turning to look at Gerard. “When we were outside you said it was a long story.”  
“Oh, y’know.” Gerard flicked his hand a little and then looked away.  
Mikey waited, but he didn’t seem to be saying anything. In another life he would’ve nudged the answer out of his brother. Instead he said, “I really don’t, dude.”  
“Well…” Gerard started tapping on the table again, not to any discernable rhythm. He took a breath, “Lately I’ve been staying with a few people. No one, uh, special, just all of us around the university.”  
“You went back to school again?”  
“No, no-- one of us is actually in the program but otherwise we’re just living there. It’s, uh, a home base. Some of us work. I’ve been selling stuff online and like, buying out if there’s anything we need.”  
“… you’re making art,” Mikey said.  
Gerard pride-smiled and nodded, scratching his neck with a delicate fingernail. “It’s, I mean, it’s different but I’m actually pretty into it. I’ve been thinking of pitching a script at Dark Horse or somewhere.”  
Mikey found himself laughing over the end of Gerard's sentence. “There’s no way someone wouldn’t recognize you eventually,” he said. People recognized _him_ in public sometimes, and he’d basically been a nobody in the band.  
Gerard shrugged. “I’d use a pseudonym. I look pretty different--”  
“You really don’t,” Mikey interrupted him. The acidy feeling had filled his chest again. He blinked it out of his eyes.  
“Well, no one pays that much attention, anyway.” Gerard waved the criticism off. “It’s called, I think it’s called ‘Umbrella Academy’. It’s gonna be really cool.” He was looking at Mikey with hopeful eyes, like he wanted him to ask about it.  
In a normal situation maybe Mikey would’ve. Right now, though, he wanted some answers, not another detour. He couldn’t bring himself to actually ask outright. “You couldn’t have been doing that this whole time,” Mikey said instead.  
Gerard shifted his gaze to the table, his expression tightening. “No, I wasn’t.”  
Mikey waited, but Gerard didn’t seem like he was continuing. Without thinking about it Mikey found himself taking irregular, deep breaths through his nose.  
“I don't remember what happened," Gerard tried. "I mean, before. We played the show, and-- I drank, and then someone must have." He hooked his fingers and made a non-graphic  _bite_ gesture with them, like a cobra snake. "But I don't know how, or when. Then, uh. I was in Jersey for a while at first."  
“Where we fucking buried you,” Mikey said without meaning too. Gerard looked up, eyes wide; Mikey tugged his hand from Gerard’s grip. “How could--” He felt like he was going to puke. “You’ve been here for so long, why wouldn’t you--”  
“Mikes, I couldn’t,” Gerard answered what Mikey couldn’t even articulate. “I, I was a mess. Alright? Super self-isolating, still an addict, still really sick--”  
_“_ That must’ve been hard for you,” Mikey snapped.  
“—and, well, lost. Real violent. For a long time, there wasn’t… it wasn’t like a movie, Mikey. You wouldn’t’ve wanted me near you. _I_ wouldn’t want myself to be near you.” Gerard’s eyes were sincere and he’d laid his hands open on the table, pleading.  
  
Mikey hesitated. Nine and a half years ago, even six years ago, he would’ve fought: of course he fucking would want Gerard around. Now he wasn’t so sure. The news headlines from the last couple weeks flashed through his brain like a slideshow: _Area Couple Slaughtered Inside Brooklyn Apartment. Homeless Population Under Attack: Remains Found In Parking Lot. Brooklyn’s Bloody Mystery Still Unsolved._  
How would he have felt with Gerard showing up to their Mom’s house, dangerous and covered in blood? Terrible. He’d have nightmares about it. If he’d been able to process it at all, so soon after everything.   
“I couldn’t show up to Mom’s like that,” Gerard continued, latent psychic abilities picking up again. His voice was grave. “I still had enough sense not to.  ... Kind of drifted around for a while. I kept up with you and the other guys, through news sites and shit.” He let out a ‘ha’ that was more of a cough than a laugh. “The library workers probably thought I was homeless, and I mean, I kinda was.”  
Mikey glanced at his brother again. Gerard was studying the table like it’d done him a deep personal wrong. Mikey didn't know how he (or himself) was feeling.  
“I knew about you,” Gerard confessed. “I mean, all of you, when you broke up the band—I read about it. I wanted to get into contact, but… I didn’t.” He looked up at Mikey. “I lost touch after a while. Still heard about you, though.”  
“About me?”  
“Everything you went through. Quitting, and everything.” Gerard paused for a minute, doing the big-eyes again.  
“Oh.” So Mikey wouldn’t have had to go over quite so much of the story as he thought he might’ve. “… I guess you can’t,” Mikey asked, making a vague gesture with his hand.  
“What? Oh-- no.” Gerard shook his head. “It’s like the coffee. Wouldn’t, uh. Wouldn’t work.”  
“Alright,” Mikey said, his head buzzing with static. So Gerard had been clean and sober, technically, for about ten years. He purposefully didn’t think of how many days it would be exactly. Maybe it didn’t count at all. It sounded like something a X-Men arc could get into: are you still an addict if you’re dead?    
Gerard reached over and put his palm on Mikey's arm, just lightly. “I’m really proud of you."  
The room lurched. Mikey swallowed, trying not to cry, trying to stop his hands tightening into fists. _I wish I could be proud of you._

 _  
_ Maybe Gerard sensed that he’d stepped on a potential landmine, because he eased away from it. Literally; he leaned back and put his hands on his lap, looking away.  
  
Mikey focused on himself for a minute, willing the room back into focus.  
“Have you been seeing anyone else?” He asked to the table.  
“What?”  
“Frank, Toro. Otter.” The first two were Mikey’s good friends still, and if they’d been keeping something like this from him… Mikey didn’t know if he could bear it. Matt, on the other hand, had peaced out of his life shortly after the funeral. He’d been on shaky grounds with the rest of them even before the band split, so it wasn’t a huge surprise. Mikey had been too far in his own grief to be anything but numb about it when it’d happened. Then he’d gotten a little better, and Matt still hadn’t returned his calls, so Mikey had given up.  
“No,” Gerard said. “I said I lost touch, remember?”  
“You know how to use the internet, G. And, like. Payphones.” His brother had been getting money somehow.  
“You’re the only one I’ve talked to, Mikey. I swear.” Gerard’s voice was quiet and serious.  
Mikey glanced over at him. G was staring at the table, too, or maybe his own shoes. He looked… drooping. Sad.  
  
It was awful. God, Mikey had fucked up somehow. Hadn’t he?  
No, Gerard had—he’d been around for so long, and hadn’t said _anything.  
_ But he was here now. It was a fucking head trip, but he was here. Mikey didn’t want their conversation to downgrade to mutual misery about the past. He'd spent so long doing that with everyone else in his life. Not his brother, too.  
  
He cleared his throat a little. “You-- you call almost robbing me talking?”' He asked.  
“I wasn’t after your money,” Gerard protested, looking up.  
“Right, just my blood.” Mikey tried to smile a little bit. He wasn’t sure if he succeeded or not, but Gerard seemed to relax, and that was all that mattered.  
Mikey sat up from leaning on the table. He waited a minute for his brain to yell at him. Then, slowly, he leaned against the puffy back of the booth until he was shoulder to shoulder with his brother. He offered his hand, palm-up.  
Gerard looked sideways at him through his curtain of crow’s nest hair. He took Mikey’s hand in his again, squeezing a little.  
Mikey folded their fingers together this time. He looked up at the pebbly ceiling of the restaurant. “We’re going to have to do a lot better than this,” Mikey said, and he wasn’t even sure what specifically he meant.  
Beside him, Gerard hummed assent.  
This whole evening was fucking crazier than him. Mikey closed his eyes, just for a minute.

 

*

  
“Mikey. Mikey?”  
“What?” Mikey blinked, feeling his neck pop when he turned his head.  
His dead brother was right in front of his face, eyes like moons. He smiled softly when Mikey looked at him. “Hey."  
"... hi?"  
"I didn't want to wake you, but, uh. I have to go.” A faint light was filling up the window behind Gerard, highlighting the outlines of buildings from the sky. It was almost dawn.  
“—oh.” Mikey lifted his head up from where he’d apparently been having a nap, and blinked the world back into focus. His mouth was super dry and his glasses were somehow smudged. “Ugh.”  
Gerard nudged him lightly in the side. Mikey automatically shuffled sideways in the seat until he could stand up, letting Gerard out of the booth first.  
  
Gerard stood, stretching his neck and messing with his hair, and then turned to Mikey. He swung their linked hands back and forth, like they were kids. Then he said, “Look, you should really watch out in this neighbourhood, okay? It’s full of vampires.”  
“What?”  
“No, seriously. It’s—don’t go out so much at night. Or eat a lot of garlic, or something. Get Mom to make you some fettucine.”  
“She always undercooks the noodles, her chicken’s a lot better,” Mikey replied automatically. It was a common complaint, and sometimes defense, in their family. He blinked a couple more times, looking at the table littered with his midnight snack's trash and wishing he still had coffee.  
Gerard’s laugh was a little wet. He shook his head. “Make it from the box or something, then. Just. Be safe, Mikey, please.”  
“I can look after myself,” Mikey said, stung. He looked back up.   
“I know,” Gerard rushed. “I know. It’s just… I worry about you.” He clasped Mikey's hand between both of his palms.  
“Well,” Mikey said, and didn’t add anything else. His head was spinning a little again. Everything was disorienting, even standing, which wasn’t helping the seventy distinct feelings swirling around in his chest. He hated early mornings.  
Gerard lifted their linked hands up to his mouth and kissed Mikey’s knuckles, then let go. “I’ll—I’ll see you later, huh?” He said, smiling with one corner of his mouth. After a second or two he nodded, then crossed the restaurant to the door.  
  
“… what?”  
Mikey blinked at the blank space his brother had left in the air. Somehow he hadn’t connected Gerard standing and saying, “I have to go,” with Gerard _leaving._  
“Wait,” Mikey said, and it came out strangled. His fear was non-specific and all-encompassing, urgent in a way that drowned him.  
The cashier kid was still getting stuff from the back, or changing shifts maybe; there’s no one else as Mikey stumbled past the counter, almost catching his foot on a stray chair.  
  
  
The air outside was so cold it felt like it could shatter. Mikey was shivering within seconds. His eyes adjusted poorly to the lack of fluorescents, and for a second he couldn’t see his brother and he honestly panicked. “Wait! Gee--”  
Then Mikey’s eyes slid back into focus, and Gerard appeared, poised turned on his heel, blinking like he was surprised to see Mikey there. His breath didn’t mist the air around him. "Mikes?"  
Mikey spoke without pausing to think. “Come home with me—or, let me walk you somewhere. I can’t just leave you like this.” He couldn’t hide the naked _you can’t leave me like this_ underneath it, but he didn’t care enough to cringe anymore.  
It took a second, but he could see when the realization processed in Gerard’s mind. His face got softer.

He walked over to Mikey, only stopping when he was stood really close. “Honey, there’s nothing you can do for me,” he said, like that was in any way what Mikey was talking about. “I’m sorry. I'll-- I'll call you, alright?”   
“Fuck you,” Mikey blurted; it occurred to him that he hadn’t said that yet in the whole time that he’d been talking to his dead brother who’d just seen fit to walk back into his life. The words come with a rush of rage; a mood swing, for sure. Mikey closed his eyes against it. It occurred to him that he was running on disbelief and drip coffee from over an hour ago and he was going to crash, hard, sooner than later. “Never mind. I’ll—I’ll see you later,” he choked out.  
“You will,” Gerard said like a promise. Then Mikey was being hugged again.  
  
It was still unexpected somehow, and Mikey found himself unable do anything but hold the hell on. Then suddenly he was pressing his face into his dead brother’s shoulder and pouring out tears without ever having remembered starting crying.  
Gerard clutched him tighter, rubbing Mikey’s back soothingly.  
Mikey shook and listened to his own, singular, heartbeat, and Gerard kept rubbing the joints of his shoulders like they’ll come loose.  He tried not to remember, but it's fruitless: the memories are bright and fizzing in his head, the drug haze peeled back in hindsight. Early days in the van, drunk as shit, Gerard high enough that he didn’t feel bad but still in possession of enough of his senses to make sure Mikey didn’t choke to death when he passed out; Gerard had held Mikey on his side in Gerard’s lap, rubbing his shoulders in the exact same way as he was now, and Mikey had felt so horribly safe. Completely sure, in the way that idealists could be, that nothing bad would happen with G so close to him.   
Mikey realized, with a feeling that was acceptance or despair or both, that he was never going to grow out of this.  
Too much. This was a terrible plan. He never should’ve let Gerard into his head. He didn’t want him to ever leave again.  
“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I love you too.” Gerard was kissing Mikey’s hair and the side of his face every so often, still holding him tightly. “I missed you too.”  
That jarred an unkind laugh out of Mikey, the sharp edge of his anger pushing through  again. “Fuck you,” he repeated thickly. “You fucking _left me_.” Ten fucking years--  
“I’m sorry,” Gerard said again, his hands tightening around Mikey’s arms again. He kissed Mikey’s cheek and then just stayed there, soft skin to skin, for at least a minute.  
By the time he pulled away Mikey could feel heat in his face, despite himself, and despite the fact that Gerard’s lips weren’t actually warm. At least the tears had stopped.  
  
G hovered for another moment, then moved back just enough that they could clearly look each other in the eye. “Alright?” He asked softly.  
“No,” Mikey snapped as much as he could with his voice still messed up from crying. He let go of Gerard’s arm to rub at his eye.  
“... I need to go,” Gerard repeated. "Soon."  
_No,_ Mikey wanted to say, bull-headed. The very idea of Gerard’s arms not being around him was horrible. He’d been an only child for a decade, it wasn’t much to ask for another five minutes of closeness, was it? Another minute?  
“Mikes, I can’t be out during the day, I’ll die,” Gerard said plaintively. “It’s—I’d stay with you if I could, I swear.”  
Oh. _I’m being childish,_ Mikey thought, feeling a new layer of shame sink onto the maelstrom in his head. He took a breath and closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again Gerard was still holding onto him. That helped, a little. “Okay,” he said finally, his voice smaller than he would’ve liked. He had to turn away to wipe his nose, trying to breathe while also smothering hiccups that shook his whole torso.

Gerard let go of Mikey in stages. When they’re almost fully disentangled, he squeezed Mikey’s shoulder for a second. “I’ll see you again, I promise. And you’ll see me. I’ll call you, I mean it.”  
“You have a phone?” Mikey asked.  
“… I can get phones,” Gerard said after a second.  
“Ah.” Mikey looked back down at his feet, giving his eyes and nose one more swipe in his sleeve before he pushed his glasses back into place. “How’ll you know my--”  
Gerard shook his head. “I’ll find you,” he replied, “Don’t worry.”  
Mikey gave an unbelieving laugh.  
Gerard at least had the decency to look slightly abashed, but the effect was ruined when he glanced over his shoulder up the avenue. East. The light was getting stronger, almost orange now.  
  
Okay. Mikey straightened up fully, putting all of his courage into not flinging himself onto his brother and demanding he not leave. He was a grown man, god fucking damnit. He wasn’t twenty-three anymore. 

  
“Goodbye,” Mikey said, because he hadn’t had a chance the first time.

  
“Bye Mikes,” Gerard echoed.

   
They stared at each other for another beat. Then Gerard turned away. He left quickly down the sidewalk, slightly slouched with his hands in his coat’s pockets, nothing more than a shadow in the pre-dawn.

 

  
  
_-o-o-o-o-_

**Author's Note:**

> a few notes on the timeline: i've handwaved details, but Gerard did have an initial breakdown in Kansas in 2004 before flying over to Japan to do the Summer Sonic tour. also, Alicia and Lindsey met the Ways in 2005 and somewhere in 2007 respectively; in this 'verse MCR wasn't a band then, which is why neither of them was mentioned.  
> on the lighter side, for anyone confused about the Disney comment: Mikey Way pirated and sold copies of weird region-specific Disney movies to help fund his Smashing Pumpkins fangirlism when he was fifteen. (source: [ this Rolling Stones interview](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/gerard-way-20061214) with G from 2006.) he did in fact get busted by a PI who came to their house, but was never charged.  
> Elephant the cat as looked after by MWay is sadly not real. if she was she would be [fat, grey and soft](http://blupoop.tumblr.com/post/134800517639/warm).


End file.
